Where do we go from here?

I get back to writing again, and I promptly sprain my shoulder and can’t write. Ironic coincidence or ominous omen? The Universe is conspiring against this blog apparently. Or against me, but that may be taking things to personally. On the other hand, the Universe nails everyone sooner or later, so maybe it is personal. Today though my shoulder is healing, my heart is healing, and just in general I’m ready to carry on with Doug’s Darkworld. Aside from my physical and emotional traumas, there are a couple of other reasons why I have had trouble restarting my writing. Call them intellectual traumas if one wills I suppose. And since I’m entering a new phase in my life, I’m still working on integrating them into my world view, and my blog view as well.

The first is my realization that most people simply couldn’t think their way out of a paper bag. Or more accurately, they couldn’t logically debate an issue to save their lives. And I mean that literally. They can regurgitate sound bytes and the opinions they have adopted as their own, but they can’t logically defend them in any way. And of course they couldn’t change their opinion if their life depended on it. This has nothing to do with intelligence or education or political affiliation either, in fact smart people can be the most ridiculous in this regard since they are good at cherry picking the facts that support their cherished beliefs. As Lisa says, “It’s hopeless, utterly utterly hopeless.” Sigh.

Secondly, either I have made some breakthrough in perception, or the mainstream news has gone another notch downward. I think it’s a little of both. The so called news these days has made it completely through the looking glass, and is now no more than a comic book loosely inspired by true events. Certain characters are cartoonized and talked about at great length, the underwear bomber being a great example. His importance in the greater scheme of things is nil, yet he dominated the news and was used as a reason to open a “new front” in the “War on Terror.” No discussion of the complex history and background and politics in Yemen, just a “there’s bad guys there so we have to get them.” Or Iran’s latest “violation” of the NPT. Pundits and so called experts immediately leaped on it as “proof” than Iran was developing nuclear missiles, despite all indications to the contrary. Iran’s nuclear facilities are monitored by foreign inspectors for God’s sake, if they wanted to hide stuff why would they allow that? It’s just plain bizarre, and it’s no wonder people can’t think clearly about the world when the news is dumbed down to the point where it ceases to have relevance at all to what’s happening. At least during the Vietnam War you could turn on the news and know that a horrible war was going on.

Which brings me to another problem. What the hell is wrong with peace? Now both parties try to outdo each other in promising us permanent war, how the hell did this happen? When I was a kid, being at war was considered a bad thing by a lot of people, now foreign war is so popular that essentially it’s become institutionalized. The USA has morphed into the new British Empire where we are always “enlightening” the natives somewhere at gunpoint. And what’s weird about it is that it all seems so normal to most people. This kinda ties back into point one though, we’re a nation of sheep now whose only skill is staying in our section of the herd. Republican sheep rule! No, Democrat sheep rule! Give me a break.

I guess it comes back to what a friend told me decades ago, we live in a world where right is wrong and wrong is right. It’s becoming clearer to me all the time just how accurate an assessment this is. And how bleak. Oh well, I guess there’s no choice but to continue to rail against the madness. Wake up people, we’re not just a herd of sheep! It’s much much worse than that, we’re lemmings!

2 Responses

Lemmings….I think your right, but this is always the way it has been. Everybody wants to be told what to do, this way they’ll have no responsibility for their actions and they’ll have somebody to blame when there are problems.

“what’s weird about it is that it all seems so normal to most people”

I completely agree…

Do do what your told or do what everybody else is doing ….if you do otherwise you are out of the norm…..follow the herd…..obey your master…..four legs good, two legs better!